Adaptation

In the Phoenix summers we adapted to the heat (like other desert creatures). Every adventure was a pre-dawn start. On the route by sunhit, we’d be hiking out by the time of the first shimmers of heat rising from the valley.

We’d zip home over wide, smooth pavement, amid scant and sleepy traffic–home to the cool, air-conditioned house, stocked for a boozy breakfast.

Breakfast is the marginalized meal–too often routine and too often rushed. Stressful and boring. So there’s luxury in a long, lingered-over breakfast. And a boozy breakfast, doubly so. A boozy breakfast subordinates the rest of the day to the demands of indulgence. The day’s adventure over, there’s nothing better.

With full bellies and buzzing heads, we’d retire to bed to nap away the day’s heat. We’d wake once the sun’s blasting rays were oblique, attenuated. Rousing ourselves, we’d prepare for the evening–the second inhabitable part of the Sonoran summer day.

Sunset signaled for music, open backyard windows and doors, and for friends to gather. Cold beer and grilled burgers were the order of the evening. 95F darkness is the perfect swimming pool weather–a joy to enter the pool, and not the least bit unpleasant to get out. We kept cool with ice-mounted cocktails and roof-launched cannonballs. We’d become nocturnal and amphibious, like other desert creatures.

About Mark Egge

Two truths and a lie: Mark Egge is an outdoor enthusiast, opera singer, and a transportation data scientist. He lives in Bozeman, Montana.